Jerry McGill - Dear Marcus: A Letter to the Man Who Shot Me

Dear Marcus is a work of nonfiction. Nonetheless, some of the names and personal characteristics of the individuals involved have been changed in order to disguise their identities. Any resulting resemblance to persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and unintentional.

Copyright 2012 by Jerry McGill

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Spiegel & Grau, an imprint of
The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

S PIEGEL & G RAU and Design is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc.

Translation of Du, Dunkelheit by Rainer Maria Rilke is by Ernest Julius Mitchell II and is reprinted here by permission of the translator.

Photographs on courtesy of Noreen McGill
Photograph on courtesy of the author
Photograph on courtesy of JoonMo Thomas Ku
Section-opening photos are courtesy of Chris Jones

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
McGill, Jerry.
Dear Marcus : a letter to the man who shot me / Jerry McGill.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-679-64460-6
1. Children of single parentsUnited StatesBiography. 2. Victims of
violent crimesUnited StatesBiography. 3. Single-parent families
United States. I. Title
HQ777.4.M384 2012
306.8560973dc23 2011031251

www.spiegelandgrau.com

Jacket design: Greg Mollica
Jacket photographs: Christopher Jones

v3.1

All of my life, for as long as I can remember, I have been in love with the world of movies. For a kid who feared and despised his environment the cinema was the greatest form of escape. It started with watching The Wizard of Oz on a tiny TV set in my mothers bedroom and moved on to actually going to the cinema. I think the first film I actually saw on the big screen was Grease. From there I saw Rocky, The Deer Hunter, anything to get me out of the hood and into a fantastic world. As a child I would regularly attend movies on my own, usually sneaking into the theater. Often, in my darkest moments, I would envision my life as one long movie with a series of fade-ins, fade-outs, and dissolves. The film scenes depicted in this memoir are fictionalized accounts of the Movie of My Life.

Another thing: throughout this work I refer to the area where I grew up as the Lower East Side. Today, due to massive gentrification, this area is currently known by many as the East Village. In my stubbornness, I will continue to call it the Lower East Side. At the time that I lived there, no one in their right mind would ever have thought of our neighborhood as part of the Village; it was truly that foreign and desolate.

INT. KITCHEN IN A TINY APARTMENTDAY

EVELYN, late thirties, black, washes dishes while smoking a cigarette. A semipermanent scowl seems to be etched on her worn face. DOREEN, baby-faced, sixteen, walks in and sits down at the kitchen table. Across the screen reads the SUBTITLE: MY MOM REVEALS IM ABOUT TO ENTER THE WORLD.

EVELYN

Im a need you to go to the store.

DOREEN

Okay.

EVELYN

Two pack of Pall Malls, a dozen eggs. Moneys on the dresser.

DOREEN

Okay. Umm, Mama can I ask you something?

EVELYN

What is it, girl? I aint got all afternoon.

DOREEN

Mama umm I aint had my period for near a week now.

After a beat Evelyn stops washing the dishes and turns to her daughter. Doreen stares down at the floor. Evelyn puts down her cigarette and dries her hands on her apron. She walks over to Doreen and smacks her hard across the face.

The idea to write to you was not an easy one, but I could no longer ignore the calling. It came swiftly and unexpectedly, like a thunderstorm on a humid afternoon or a tumor returned with a renewed ferocity. You cant keep a strong force down. The question becomes, why write to you now, some thirty years after the fact? Why bother to waste this precious blood, sweat, and energy on yousomeone I never even met? Someone whom I can only imagine, but never truly visualize or come to understand? Why put any effort at all into contacting someone who came ever so close to ending my life with just the twitch of a finger? Its a valid question whose response is not very easy to articulate. But I suppose I have to try.

The scar from where the bullet entered my back is still there. It always will be, like a tattoo or stretch marks. I honestly never think about it now, as it is out of my sight line, but every so often it rises from the obscurity of my skin. At times a lover will be running her fingers down my neck in a caring, intimate manner and her finger will catch on that point. It feels like a zit now, no larger than a bee sting really. Still, the question always comes: Whats this from?

The veracity of my answer will always depend on my feelings for the questioner. If I believe she will be around for a while, if she is someone whom I care enough about to share this darkness with, I will give just a little, but only so much.

Oh, I was involved in an incident a while back, Ill say. You cant reveal too much too soon, you know. Theres gotta be some mystery.

If it is someone I just leaned on for comfort at a particular moment, or someone I can tell is not truly share-worthy, well, then she will receive the casual, harmless white lie. There will be no follow-up response. Not even eye contact. Oh, thats nothing. Childish roughhousing, I will rattle off as if swatting away a fly. The majority have received the latter. I dont really like to share. Its not in my nature anymore. The events that occurred to produce that scar are not really a place I care to visit. As the saying goes, I have moved on. And Im proud to make that statement. But nowin this moment in timeaddressing It, addressing You, just feels appropriate. Until I speak to you, I can never fully close this door. And I need that resolution. I think Ive earned it.

Youmy nameless, faceless friend with whom I share such a close, personal relationshipdo you ever think about me? Do you ever wonder what became of methat kid whom you saw walking down the street that one brisk night in January? Was it your intention to link us indelibly with your simple, somewhat effortless act of violence? Were you even remotely aware of the potency of such an act? Did you blink? Give it a second thought? Did you say to yourself, Maybe I shouldnt do this?

I have created over a hundred scenarios for how we met. With all my time in the hospital there was nothing to do but obsess. It was fascinating at first, putting together those shards of a jigsaw that would forever lack pieces. In my mind you are either black or Latino. Why? Simple deduction, since those are the only types of people who lived in that area where we grew up. Im going to go ahead and make you black. I have the power now. You are positively a male since women dont typically go about ghettos shooting guns to prove their worthiness. Women dont really grow up with thuggish gun fantasies, do they? They sure as hell didnt back in 1982.